James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Calling him a photorealist is a little misleading. Although he uses photos as a source for his work, many of his paintings combine information from several different photos, and he doesn't paint over traced photographic projections. In the case of "Murano Glass," above, the reflection that you see in the window isn't actually visible in that particular store window. He had to construct the scene.

Richard Estes, "The Candy Store," 1969, 47 x 68 inches

Painting a reflection in a shop window presents a fascinating visual challenge. Usually the street reflection is most visible in the dark areas of the window. Wherever the reflection crosses an object seen through the window, the colors and values are added to each other, such as in the slanting yellow sign.

Estes delights in creating a puzzle out of all the overlapping layers of information. In the painting above, the interior ceiling forms slant across reflections of buildings in the upper right. Some signs, such as "Burger" are reflected twice by parallel planes of glass or mirrors.

Painting reflections + transparency from observation rather than from photos is a much greater challenge because one has to overcome the effects of stereoscopic vision and focal depth. Whereas a camera will compress reflections and transparencies into a single plane, our eyes and brains separate them, so that it's almost impossible to perceive the combined effects of transparency and reflection at the same time.

7 comments:

I saw this show a few weeks ago and it is quite amazing. I was aware of Estes work but seeing a large number of them in person is extremely inspiring, even if photo realism is not necessarily your cup of tea. There are also a few woodland landscapes in the show that were equally impressive and a nice counter to the cityscapes. I highly recommend it if in the area!

I met Estes years ago and he is a smart, hard working guy but these pictures seem more like the visual equivalent of sudoku puzzles than art with real vitality and humanity.

Putting Estes aside, thanks for another year of wonderful, insightful posts. Your energy, curiosity and positive attitude never fail to impress. I hope you have a wonderful new year and I look forward to following you in 2015.

Wow! To think of the amount of work that must have went into painting reflections and transparencies is insane! I love the first painting, absolutely beautiful! I love the nostalgic quality to the paintings. Always great seeing your art history posts, Mr. Gurney!

Thanks for posting this. I wish I were able to come see the exhibition. I understand what David says which is what I feel about most photorealism. However, to me, Estes stands out. Largely because of the painterly approach he takes to his work. Rather than simply copying the photo square-inch-by-square-inch as does, say Ralph Goings, he starts his paintings in a very painterly way, laying in large, almost abstract shapes and then develops the whole canvas together making adjustments and changes throughout, as you said in your post. On my blog I've posted a couple of examples showing some of this.Thanks again for all your great posts! I look forward for what's to come in the new year.